Author: Trapaud, Elisha
Biography:
TRAPAUD, Elisha (c. 1756-1828: ancestry.com)
A descendant of Huguenot refugees, Trapaud was a son of Mary Augier (1717-1769) and her husband, London merchant Peter (Pierre) Trapaud (1716-1774). His father, naturalized in 1760, was a son of Elizec and Jeanne Trapaud of Castillon-la-Bataille. In 1776 he followed his uncle, General Cyrus Trapaud (1715-1801), colonel of the 52d foot, into the EIC. His first posting was as the EIC’s factor at Sumatra. Having in 1779 joined the EIC Corps of Engineers, in 1812 he was appointed superintending engineer at Madras. He rose from captain in the EIC in 1784 to lieutenant general in 1814. His concurrent ranks in the British army were, from 1801, lieutenant colonel; from 1815, lieutenant general. On 4 Dec. 1787 at Leicester, he married Harriet (1765-1841), a daughter of Jonathan Foster of Aylestone, agent to the Duke of Rutland. They had three daughters, Harriet (1791-1846), Mary (1794-1892), and Isabella (1795-1848). His only son, Cyrus (d 1813), a lieutenant in the EIC Corps of Engineers, died in India. With his wife and daughter Harriet, he was in England on leave from mid-1816 to early 1818. In Nov 1820, he was granted another three-year furlough. The reviews of his poem Aglaura, a Tale were devastating: “extremely unharmonious” (CR [1774], 152) and “spiritless.” (MR [1774], 318). A skilled draughtsman, he had greater success with his 1788 publication, Twenty Original Views, Taken in Different Parts of India (a copy recently sold for more than £20,000). He also published A Short Account of Prince of Wales Island (1788); Account of the Island of Janna in the Year 1784 (1789); and, with William Hodges, Seventy-Four Views of India (1818). His character and appearance are comically portrayed in the Asiatic Journal (1834, 77). Trapaud died at 1 Keynsham Place, London Road, Cheltenham, on 24 Mar. 1818. Despite being a member of the evangelical Cheltenham Free Church, he was buried at St Mary, Charlton Kings, Cheltenham. (ancestry.com 27 Apr. 2023; PROB 11/1741; East India Register [1784 through 1820]; Cheltenham Chronicle, 3 Jan. and 27 Mar. 1828; “Pedigree of … Trapaud …,” Genealogist, 22 [1906], 261; Publications of the Huguenot Society, 27 [1923], 160) JC
Other Names:
- E. T.
- Mr. Trapaud